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Tuesday, September 24, 2013

My baby has a yeast rash!! How do I get my cloth diapers clean?!

Okay. Baby has a yeast rash. Not only do you have to get it cleared up on the bum, you also have to make sure you get the yeast out of your diapers.

So what do you do?

First, make sure your baby’s pediatrician confirms that it is yeast and treats your little one for it. The topical creams that are needed are not cloth diaper safe, so you should use a liner or disposables if that’s an option. Once you do the routine outlined below, you should use a barrier or disposables while your baby has the rash and for at least 5 days after the rash is gone. This is because your diapers could re-infect your baby. Disposable liners are a great option but to be honest, disposables are probably the easiest until baby is yeast-free.

On the way home from the doctor, stop at a vitamin or whole foods store and pick up grapefruit seed extract and tea tree oil. (Make sure it is grapefruit seed and not grape seed.) GNC has it. I’m sure Vitamin World or Vitamin Shoppe or Whole Foods would as well.

You’re also going to need chlorine bleach. Some sites will tell you to use oxygen bleach but it’s not enough to kill the fungus. Chlorine bleach will not hurt your diapers. In fact, some brands, including bumGenius, recommend adding bleach to your diapers once a month to keep them on their A game.

Wash all of your diapers, cloth wipes, and liners with detergent. Anything that came in contact with the yeast infection needs to be disinfected. Similar to stripping, it’s best to do this with clean diapers. Run a hot wash next. You don’t have to dry your diapers in between. Water should be around 122 F. Add ¼- ½ cup chlorine bleach to the water if you don’t have a bleach dispenser. If you have a dispenser, use that. Also add about 30 drops of the grapefruit seed extract and tea tree oil to the wash. After everything is added to your machine, put your diapers and everything in. After they wash, I’d do two or three extra rinses or a short wash to make sure all the bleach is out.

If possible, put your diapers out in the sun to dry. This will make sure they dry completely and sun never hurts diapers.

Notes: You need both the bleach and the grapefruit seed extract because bleach kills the yeast while the gse kills the yeast spores.

Don’t put the bleach directly on your diapers. Add it to the water before adding your diapers so it’s not concentrated when touching your precious diapers. Good luck and hopefully your little one feels better soon.

Bio: Nicole is a mother of two little ones, Sophia, 5 and Joshua, 4 months. She is an Army veteran and a pastry chef. In the past year or so, she dove headfirst into a more natural lifestyle and loves every minute of it.

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9 comments:

I am brand-new to cloth diapering (my baby isn't born yet, actually!) and I wonder about this bleaching method (I noticed bum genius says to do it monthly also). Does this not ruin the color of the diapers? Do you use color safe bleach?

No the bleach does not ruin your diapers. Properly diluted, bleach is safe. Color safe bleach has no disinfecting properties so it's not helpful. You want chlorine bleach. It gets diluted to 1TBL to 1 gallon of water and your diapers will be fine. HTH.